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Boosting Europe’s biomethane potential by 66%
19/4/2023
News
Over the next five years, a new European Union (EU) funded project aims to ‘diversify the technology basis for biomethane production in Europe, reduce production costs and contribute to the uptake of biomethane technologies’ in a bid to increase European biomethane potential by 66%, reports the European Biogas Association (EBA).
The Biomethaverse project involves 22 partners from nine European countries and will support the scale-up of biomethane production to 35bn cm by 2030 proposed under the EU’s REPowerEU plan.
‘Biomethane is a renewable and environmentally sustainable substitute of natural gas able to provide energy storage capacity and perform as a flexible renewable energy carrier and fuel. As such, biomethane is well placed to contribute to the achievement of climate goals and energy security alike,’ states the EBA.
Over the past decade, biomethane production has been growing steadily, rising to 3.5bn cm in 2021 and is forecast to reach 35bn cm by 2030. By then, the Biomethaverse project is expected to have boosted the current level of biomethane production by 66%, says the EBA. This upscaling of biomethane production could enable 113mn tCO2e of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions savings in Europe, which is similar to the current GHG emissions of Belgium.
Five innovative biomethane production pathways are to be demonstrated in five European countries – France, Greece, Italy, Sweden, and Ukraine – as part of the Biomethaverse initiative. The project’s production routes cover one or a combination of thermochemical, electro-biochemical and biological production methodologies. As a starting point, four demonstration plants will use conventional anaerobic digestion (AD), and one will use conventional gasification.
The project aims to ‘enable and encourage different energy sectors to work together’, contributing to ‘energy system integration by optimising and modernising the function of the energy system as a whole’, explains the EBA. Under the demonstrator projects, CO2 effluents from AD or gasification and other intermediate products will be combined with renewable hydrogen or renewable electricity to increase the overall biomethane production.
The initiative also aims to ensure that biomethane reaches gas grid quality standards at affordable production prices, in a bid to help facilitate the scale-up of biomethane production in Europe. Today, the production cost of biomethane ranges from €55/MWh to €110/MWh, depending on feedstock, technology and plant scale, reports the EBA. The Biomethaverse project is expecting to reduce biomethane production costs by 44%.
